Velvet Cocoa Cake with Instant Buttercream

Velvet Cocoa Cake with Instant Buttercream

Cupcake Ranking: 3 Cupcakes

This cake was good.  Nothing to write home about, but fine.  It was a good, basic chocolate cake.  The interesting thing about this cake is the frosting.  There is no powdered sugar in it.  It is butter, marshmallow cream and cocoa.  If you were in a bind, needed frosting and didn't have powdered suga,r this would be a 'go-to' recipe.

Ingredients

For the cake

12 Tbs (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted Butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
2 1/2 C all-purpose Flour, plus more for pans
3/4 C Cocoa powder
1 tsp Baking soda
1/4 tsp Salt
1 C Granulated sugar
1 C light-Brown sugar
3 large Eggs
2 tsp Vanilla extract
1 1/2 C Buttermilk

For the frosting

1 C (2 sticks) unsalted Butter, room temperature
2 jars (7.5 ounces each) Marshmallow cream
2/3 C Cocoa powder
2/3 C Semisweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled
1 Tbs Vanilla extract

Make the cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and lightly flour two 9-inch round cake pans. In a bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well incorporated. Beat in vanilla.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three additions, alternating with buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Scrape bowl as needed.

Pour batter into pans. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes before inverting cakes onto rack to cool completely.

Make the buttercream: In mixing bowl, beat butter and marshmallow cream until fluffy. Beat in cocoa, chocolate, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon water. If too thin, refrigerate about 5 minutes.

Place one layer on platter. Spread top with 1 cup buttercream. Place second layer on top. Frost entire cake with remaining buttercream.

Rach's Notes:

As I said before, this cake is a basic, not fancy, chocolate cake.  The taste was not amazing and not very moist.  But for a basic chocolate cake it was fine.  Will I make it again?  Probably not.  If you didn't have a lot of ingredients, this cake would be good to make if you needed an emergency cake.  I think it can all be summarized by a simple shrug.